Great Frenchbeer Farmhouse

Great Frenchbeer Farmhouse

This is a farmhouse and former Dartmoor longhouse, probably originating in the 16th century but extensively rebuilt in the early or mid-17th century. It was refurbished in the early 20th century and modernised in 1986.

The building is constructed mostly from plastered granite stone rubble, though the lower parts of the walls include large blocks of dressed granite. The upper storey of the outshots is timber-framed and weather-boarded. There are granite stacks, one retaining its original granite ashlar chimney shaft while the others are plastered brick. The house has a thatched roof, while the shippon and outshots are roofed in slate.

The building follows a three-room-and-through-passage longhouse plan, built down a slope facing south-east. The inner room parlour occupies the uphill left (south-western) end and has an end stack with a newel stair alongside. The hall features an axial stack backing onto the passage. The shippon sits at the downhill end, with part of it now occupied by a dairy. Two-storey outshots extend across the back of the main house; these may date from the 17th century, though the upper storey was added around 1910. The house probably began as an open hall house in the late medieval period, but the 17th-century refurbishment was so thorough that it must be regarded as a single build and has been two storeys throughout since then.

The front elevation is irregular with four windows, mostly late 19th and early 20th-century casements with glazing bars. In the early 20th century, a granite two-light window with a chamfered mullion was inserted into the inner room, with another placed in the chamber above, the latter topped with an eyebrow. A doorway with a plank door was inserted at the same time. The original front passage doorway, with a soffit-chamfered lintel and plank door, sits to the right of centre. To its left is a 19th-century oven projection. At the shippon end, a roughly central cow-door is flanked by slit windows; the left slit window is set within the blocking of the original cow-door. A first-floor hayloft loading hatch is positioned towards the right end. The roof is gable-ended to the left and hipped to the right, with an original drain hole in the right end wall.

The interior is largely intact. The hall has a three-bay ceiling on soffit-chamfered crossbeams with step stops. The granite fireplace features ashlar sides and lintel with a chamfered surround and is unusually shallow. A side oven is lined or relined in brick. At the upper end of the hall stands an oak plank-and-muntin screen. The headbeam is soffit-chamfered with scroll stops over each panel, and the muntins are moulded, the same on both sides. An oak bench remains fixed to the screen on the hall side. The crossbeam in the parlour matches those in the hall. The parlour fireplace is granite ashlar with a soffit-moulded lintel that is not completed down the jambs. On the lower side of the passage, the granite wall includes a low doorway to the dairy. The shippon end has three roughly-finished crossbeams, with 20th-century cow stalls. The roof over the shippon is late 19th or early 20th-century, made up of A-frames with nailed collars. The remainder of the roof is inaccessible but is thought to comprise 17th-century A-frame trusses.